As they get a taste of the high-stress world of broadcast
news, students in Kansas are finding out that producing a TV show is harder
than it looks.

As they get a taste of the high-stress world of
broadcast news, students in Kansas are finding out that producing a
TV show is harder than it looks.

Outside, the sky is just beginning to lighten as morning commuters
slowly drive over the rain-washed streets of this Kansas City suburb.
But inside a red-brick building, students from Kansas' Blue Valley
school district are wide awake, their moods decidedly businesslike.
Every week, they shoot, edit, produce, and anchor a live news show,
"Good Morning, Blue Valley," that airs Fridays at 7 a.m. on cable
TV.

On this Friday morning in April, it's two minutes before showtime.
Senior Brooke Benage talks into her headset to two students manning
cameras. Then she glances through a plate-glass window into the
television studio, where two female anchors fiddle with their clip-on
microphones.

At 6:59 a.m., the five students working at the show's control board
focus intently on the television monitors in front of them, their hands
on a myriad of dials, switches, and levers. Benage, this week's
director, adjusts her headphones.

"Ten seconds," she says calmly to the studio. The two male student
sportscasters stop joking and straighten up. One of the show's news
anchors looks down at her script, whispering her introduction—a
last chance to practice her lines.

Benage glances to her right at another girl. "Ready?"

The student nods, her eyes on the clock, her finger on the "play"
button of the tape deck.

"OK, roll tape. Roll sound," Benage orders.

The show's introduction beams on the half-dozen monitors in the
control room. Up-tempo music booms over the loudspeakers. On the
monitors, pupils bound from a school bus, a clock alarm rings, bread
pops from a toaster, and a girl's voice says, "This week on 'Good
Morning, Blue Valley' ..."

Meanwhile, Benage darts a look at her camera operators. "Camera
three, take three. Get ready with a two-shot."

She pauses. "I need a two-shot on camera three."

Two seconds crawl by. "Quickly, please," she says.

The red lights on the cameras blink on, and the cameras swivel
toward the anchors, who smile brightly, expectantly. The teleprompter
rolls the first two lines of their script. A camera operator points at
the anchors and starts the countdown: "5-4-3-2-1!"

Not so long ago, high school students used clunky videocameras and
rudimentary editing programs to produce grainy and often poorly
reported television news shows. But now, an increasing number of
schools are spending tens of thousands of dollars to buy
professional-quality digital videocameras, television editing and
production equipment, and teleprompters, as well as to build
state-of-the-art news studios.

Of about 1,400 member schools in the National Scholastic Press
Association, close to 60 operate broadcast-news shows, compared with
almost none 12 years ago, according to Tom E. Rolnicki, the executive
director of the Minneapolis-based NSPA. And the number of broadcast
delegates at the group's national conventions has also doubled, from
100 to approximately 200 in recent years.

Rolnicki says two main reasons account for this national trend:
First, the technology has improved, dropping the cost of high-end
digital equipment, which is also now easier to use. The second is that
television news has carved out a significant niche in schools, and its
presence has made school administrators more aware of the potential
value of student broadcast journalism.

The Los Angeles-based Channel One Network, for example, produces a
daily, advertiser-supported news show watched by 8 million students in
12,000 schools nationwide. CNN also airs a daily show, "Student News,"
used by teachers across the country as part of their classroom
lessons.

Students can also participate in CNN's news-training program, which
teaches them the basics of broadcast journalism. The Atlanta- based
cable network offers workshops in television production as well.

Blue Valley's broadcast program—which draws students from the
district's four high schools—started three years ago. Since then,
district students have won a half- dozen prestigious NSPA-sponsored
national awards in news, features, and sports for their weekly live
show, as well as for "Blueprints," an hourlong, monthly newsmagazine
program. Both shows are broadcast on a local cable channel.

As this school year starts to wane, the members of the
18,000-student district's latest "news team" have become more adept and
sure of themselves in creating and producing "Good Morning, Blue
Valley."

But as in the real world of broadcast news, problems crop up,
last-minute changes need to be made, and there's always one scary
moment when everything goes wrong.

Monday

Step back to the Monday before the show aired that rainy Friday
morning. This is when the show's behind-the-scenes work gets
started.

On this early morning, the students already have a good jump on the
program. A few have already shot footage for their stories, and several
more have interviews lined up. But much more still needs to be
done.

At 7:30 a.m., about 15 students gather in a classroom in the
red-brick district building. Several television monitors, two digital
editing machines, and other equipment take up space on each side of the
room. Posters of the movies "Broadcast News" and "Network" adorn the
white walls.

At 8:23, broadcast-technology manager Bruce McRoberts, their
teacher, glances at his watch and says, "OK, guys, you got to start
moving."

Of about 1,400 member schools in the National
Scholastic Press Association, close to 60 operate broadcast-news
shows, compared with almost none 12 years ago.

Some students crowd into a nearby room, where they start hauling out
cameras and other equipment, then head out into the early-morning
sunshine. Others work before a slew of television and computer
monitors, editing equipment, and audio boards.

Later that morning, sophomore cameraman Chris Pearson drives to
Lakewood Elementary School to shoot the school's Earth Day celebration.
Senior Megan Connor meets him, and they immediately get to work.

Pearson tapes children as they dig in the school garden, and Connor
grabs two others for interviews. She attaches a clip-on microphone to a
5th grader's shirt. But something's wrong. The microphone is dead. She
and Pearson check the battery, plug and unplug wires, but nothing
works. As a last resort, Connor uses a hand- held microphone.

Back in the studio, McRoberts has a cellphone pressed to one ear and
his office phone held to the other. On one, he's talking to a student
who's desperately looking for a student golfer he's supposed to tape,
but can't find. On the other, McRoberts is scheduling a site visit for
a student story.

Meanwhile, a few miles away, senior Quin Kelley is interviewing a
deaf student at Prairie Star Middle School. But she can't seem to get
more than one- word answers from the boy, who's accompanied by a
sign-language interpreter. After learning that he likes to chat online,
Kelley asks, "What do you talk about when you're on the Internet?"

He shrugs.

"Girls?" Kelley asks.

"Sometimes," he says and smiles enigmatically.

At 3:20 p.m., Kelley rushes to an after-school job. But senior Kevin
Bartel, her cameraman, stays and shoots footage of the deaf student at
track practice. Bartel crouches on the track with his camera as
athletes race by, but he doesn't flinch. He's used to being close to
the action.

There was the time a softball whizzed by his ear, missing him by two
inches. Another time, Bartel got pegged by a soccer ball. But he didn't
drop the videocamera.

"I saw it coming, but I kept filming because it was a good shot," he
says, and grins. "I like to get in their faces, in the middle of
everything."

Tuesday

Today is about getting as much done as possible to head off a
bottleneck of work on Wednesday afternoon. All the students understand
this. But a sense of urgency hasn't kicked in yet.

At 7:45 a.m., Connor, this week's producer, starts to write the
script and talks to two students about their stories. Junior Brent
Coffman sits at an editing machine, figuring out what he still needs
for his 2½-minute story on a retiring administrator.

"This is the hardest part, thinking about how to put it all
together," he says. Coffman adds that at first, the technology was
intimidating. "You come in here," he gestures at the equipment, "and
you think, 'whoa.' "

Meanwhile, McRoberts talks to junior Rachel Budd about her story.
"We've got two hours until we get there. I want you to think about how
to set those shots up," he says.

"Do I get to put it together?" she asks.

McRoberts nods.

"By when?" she says.

He looks at her pointedly. "Today," he says.

Budd laughs nervously. "You're kidding, right?"

"This is your chance to do it like they do in the big time. Shoot
it, edit it, have it for the five o'clock news," McRoberts says.

At 12:45 p.m., the reporter/cameraman team of Connor and Bartel
shows up at Indian Valley Elementary School for a story about babies
and toddlers learning sign language. Inside a bright room, fuzzy-headed
babies crawl. Toddlers scurry from one corner to another.

Holding an armload of equipment, Bartel steps gingerly around the
children and sets up lights. Connor hands a clip-on microphone to a
mother she's interviewing. Again, the microphone doesn't work.

"Is this the same mike we had yesterday?" Connor asks. With a sigh,
she uses the hand-held microphone again, placing it close to the
woman's face. The interview goes well— the mother talks easily
and candidly.

Then her daughter almost topples into the lighting equipment and
sideswipes Bartel, who's videotaping the interview. Letting out a
relieved whoosh of breath, he steadies the lights.

‘I have a new respect for the people who do
this professionally. It's harder than I thought it would
be.’

John Morgan,

student reporter

At another elementary school, student reporter John Morgan stands
outside, camera in hand. He's trying to interview two pupils before the
final school bell rings and hundreds of children stream through the
doors and run right through his shot.

Morgan quickly asks a 5th grade boy and girl questions as cars
rumble so noisily at the nearby curb that it's hard to hear the
children's answers. As a hot sun beats down, Morgan begins to sweat. He
waits several times for parents to pass in front of his camera before
continuing.

Afterward, he says: "I have a new respect for the people who do this
professionally. It's harder than I thought it would be."

Back in his office, McRoberts has recently returned from
accompanying Budd to a school for her story. Shaking his head, the
teacher realizes that Budd forgot to do her "stand-up," when a reporter
on camera introduces or ends a story. She'll have to go out there
again, he says to himself.

McRoberts, who once produced and directed sports and public-affairs
programs for a cable company, wants to add a beginning-journalism class
as a prerequisite before students work on the show. He wants them to
hone their news sense and learn how to better craft a story: how to set
it up, shoot it, and know what questions to ask before they go on site.
That would help them cut back on wasted footage and production
time.

Since the program already requires two classes, though, McRoberts
realizes it would be hard to add that prerequisite.

"We're still in the process of building the program, building the
curriculum," he says. "My goal is to give these kids a real-life idea
of what life would be like at a real broadcasting facility."

Students must take two classes, Broadcast Technology 1 and 2, before
working on the television shows. They learn the basics of shooting
video, editing, lighting, and doing voice-overs. Then they're handed
videocameras and assigned beats just like real reporters (each student
covers an elementary or middle school). Then they're let loose.

As his mind jumps back to this week's show, McRoberts shakes his
head, a little anxious now. "Things that should take two to three days
are taking three to four," he says. "We're not as prepared as we should
be."

Wednesday

If the race to get ready for Friday's show started out as a steady
jog on Monday, it's now becoming a sprint. Some students still need to
shoot scenes, and few have their stories finished.

At 7:30 a.m., the control room buzzes with activity. Students hunker
over the editing stations, digitally revising stories, doing
voice-overs, adjusting audio levels. Several students wait in line to
use the equipment.

"We still have seven stories to do and only five [editing
machines]," McRoberts says worriedly.

Bartel is in a nearby classroom, setting up an elaborate system of
lights for an interview. On the set, a student moves furniture around,
assembling the set for "Good Morning, Blue Valley." A school employee
stands on a ladder and replaces a stage light. Before the morning is
over, he has to replace two more.

At the same time, senior Kyle Cook is editing his sports footage.
But it's slow going. He keeps playing a shot of a soccer player doing a
front flip before she throws the ball toward the goal.

"That is so cool," he says, and rewinds it again.

At 8:40 a.m., three of the students are tired of waiting for the
editing machines. They're in the graphics room playing computer video
games. McRoberts pokes his head in and says to himself, "I guess this
is payback for having them in here late last night."

Later, he says he sometimes gets frustrated when his students goof
off. Then, he says, he realizes "that these are just kids. They're 17
years old."

As the morning wears on, sign-language teacher Darcy Beaver walks in
for her interview on the story about babies learning sign language.
Bartel starts videotaping. Then stops abruptly. Connor, who's
conducting the interview, looks at Bartel. He had forgotten to insert a
tape into the videocamera. After he slips in a tape, they start again.
Then stop. Connor forgot to hook Beaver to a microphone.

"Aargh," Connor says and shakes her head. Beaver clips on her
microphone, and the rest of the interview goes smoothly.

That afternoon, Bartel and Connor start editing the sign-language
story, but get sidetracked on how the administration, they say, doesn't
let them broadcast any story showing the district in anything but a
positive light.

"It's 'Happy Valley' here," says Bartel sarcastically.

A story on the opening of a new Sonic fast-food restaurant, for
example, got axed because it showed students who had cut class. Another
story, on locker theft, was given less prominent play in "Blueprints,"
the district program that showcases some of the best student work.

While some other school district broadcast shows focus on
controversial subjects such as student drug abuse and eating disorders,
McRoberts says he makes it clear from the start that Blue Valley
stories focus on "good kids doing good things."

"This is our niche. This is what we do," he says evenly. "We know
we're not going to wow our audience with a teen-pregnancy story, so we
have to be really good at telling the stories we do have."

Thursday

Things are starting to come together, but slowly. Four stories, plus
the show's introduction, are in the "can." But six more still need
tweaking.

McRoberts looks at Kevin Bartel and Brooke Benage as they edit their
stories. He tells them in clipped tones that they need to hurry up.
After he leaves, Bartel shares some bad news.

"Brooke, you know all the work I just did?"

Benage doesn't take her eyes away from her monitor as she hurries to
finish her story. "It's gone? How'd you lose it?"

Bartel drops his head in his hands. "I don't know."

Students talk about their frustration that the
administration does not allow them to broadcast stories that might be
critical of the school district.

As if the students weren't busy enough, today is also the show's
dress rehearsal. At 9:34 a.m., students man the controls, and the
anchors stand by on the set. Still, there's a relaxed air in the
studio, a feeling among the students that it's not show time yet. When
junior Kathy McCleery gives the weather forecast, she's sipping a
super-sized soda.

That relaxed atmosphere disappears when the wrong footage rolls on
the monitors. Instead of the baby sign-language video, sports footage
comes on screen.

"Stop. Stop!" says Benage, the director. The show starts again. It's
9:39 a.m. McRoberts watches silently, one hand on his chin. McCleery
does the weather again, this time while munching on Tater Tots.

Co-anchor Jessica Collins introduces the sign- language story again.
The audio plays, but the screens remain black. Benage shakes her head
and says, "We're going to try that again. Something isn't patched
right."

McRoberts steps in and fiddles with the controls. After a pause, the
audio comes back on, but instead of matching footage, the video for a
nature-center story rolls on the monitors. No one seems surprised at
the false starts.

Collins then introduces the sign-language story for a third time.
Video and audio match this time. Benage looks relieved. The next story,
on the retiring administrator, runs glitch-free. Things are finally
falling in place.

Then students in the control room start to grumble. Footage of a
story on a basketball player is missing. Thinking quickly, Benage
ditches the plan to run that video and orders the camera operators to
focus on the two sportscasters. As one of them begins to speak, he
leans forward, squinting at the teleprompter, stumbling over his
words.

A few students in the control room arch their eyebrows. McRoberts
walks to the set and says to the sportscaster, "You wrote the script,
so don't tell me you don't know what it says."

After a few more minutes, the rehearsal ends. Students take off
their headphones and gather around McRoberts. With a small smile, he
says, "OK, that was moderately awful. That's the bad news."

Some of the students look down. Others smile good-naturedly.

McRoberts continues, "The good news is that you got the bad one out
of the way, so tomorrow will be better."

Friday

On this day, the technical broadcast skills the students have
learned begin to shine. The first two minutes of the first show run
like clockwork. Under Benage and Connor's leadership, the anchors stay
on message, the students play video footage promptly, and McCleery
gives a succinct update on the weather.

The camera goes live to co-anchor Lindsay Allison. She's slouched in
her seat, not paying attention. People in the control room groan.

"Oh, no. What is she doing?" says Benage, who peers through a
plate-glass window at the camera operators in the studio. Allison jumps
up in her chair when she realizes the camera is live.

An increasing number of schools are spending tens of
thousands of dollars to buy professional-quality digital
videocameras, television editing and production equipment, and
teleprompters, as well as to build state-of-the-art news
studios.

Recovering quickly, she introduces the story on the retiring
administrator. The students in the control room roll the video and
focus on the next story, and McRoberts strides onto the studio set.

"Pay attention," he instructs the anchors. He starts pacing again,
nervously. He stops next to Benage, whose brow is furrowed. "Make sure
to give them a countdown," he tells her.

Benage nods, then looks at the script. "I need a two-shot on camera
three," she says and leans forward. "That looks good. ... Can you fix
that camera a little bit? Just make sure you don't cut off their
heads."

The next two stories run smoothly, and senior John Morgan delivers
his stand-up on Morse Elementary like a pro.

But then the cameras show the sportscasters in an extreme zoom shot,
their faces filling the entire screen.

"Whoa! Fix the camera, fix the camera," Benage yells. She cuts to
girls' soccer highlights. Footage of female athletes' bare midriffs
come on screen, and laughter ripples through the set.

Benage smiles and says, "Ready, camera one." The camera swivels to
sportscaster Brett Coberly. The mood in the control room darkens. Brent
Coffman, who's manning the teleprompter, sighs loudly and folds his
hands behind his head. Other students stare first at each other, then
at Coberly.

One asks, "What is he doing?"

Coberly, a senior, is improvising his stand-up, not following the
script on the teleprompter. This throws everybody off. Then he
introduces the wrong story and finishes sooner than expected. The crew
at the control board scrambles to cue the next story.

The cameras swing back to Kyle Cook, the other sportscaster.

"Sorry for that technical mishap there," he says, smiling
sheepishly.

As the show's closing synthesized music booms over the speakers,
people take off their headphones and rewind the tapes. The students run
two half-hour live shows back to back, from 7 to 8 a.m.

The second broadcast runs a little more smoothly. The anchors
introduce the stories articulately and in the right order. The stories
run with no audio or video problems, and the sports anchors make fewer
flubs. McRoberts says, "I think we're all on the same page for sports
now."

After the show ends, the lights in the control room brighten, and
the ones on the set are extinguished. The students, looking tired, take
off their headsets and stretch. They put away the microphones, turn off
the cameras, the audio boards, and the television monitors.

"OK, that wasn't bad," McRoberts says, as the students scarf down
doughnuts and swig orange juice. Then they start talking about next
week, when they'll do it all over again.

Coverage of technology is supported in part by the William and
Flora Hewlett Foundation.

Our Kansas
page includes articles and statistics on education issues from the past
year.

Web Resources

Visit Kansas' Blue Valley
Schools District to learn more about the district's Broadcast
Technology Center. "The center is at the core of an academic
program which is aimed at providing students with real, on-air
experience in the broadcast technology field."
Interested in learning more about the district's broadcasting
facilities? Take a virtual
tour of the broadcast center, and read about the achievements
and awards bestowed upon the district and its pupils for their
endeavours in broadcasting.

Studentpress.org has
posted a collection of job and internship
opportunities for both teachers and students interested in working
in mass media. A directory of "links and contact information for
resources and organizations of interest to student journalists" has
also been posted.

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